Friday, March 25, 2011

Jim's week in review...

What a week it has been! Busy, stressful, and did I mention busy? I had no idea I could cram so much into one week. So, without further ado, here we go, with the week in review!

Life in general: OK, I think I mentioned busy and stressful. Yesterday was our annual “Festival of Nations” at school. As a language school, we set aside one night of the year to highlight the cultural education that is a part of learning a language through immersion. We have performances, displays and food (more on that later). I am the stage manager at my school as one of my extra duties. What that means is that I oversee the technical aspects of any performance on the stage in the auditorium. Since Black History Month is largely considered a cultural event, we lumped our annual Black History Month program in with Festival of Nations this year, which just added to the amount of prep time for me this week. I was at school late every day this week, with last night being the capstone and me at school until 8pm. There is an unbelievable amount of stress associated with this event. Add to that an extra stressor: on Wednesday, my car got broken into at school. Some yutz smashed my front passenger side window and took my GPS out of my glove compartment. I assume what tipped them off to its presence was the mount on the dash, because they took that too. What was absolutely hilarious to me was that they did not that the $200 sunglasses that were dangling on the mount. The sunglasses were worth more than the bloody GPS! So my stress level is a little high right now, as you can imagine. Said stress level has led to me waking up around 3am twice this week (today being the second time) and not being able to get back to sleep.

Exercise: I would like to say that I did the three times exercising that Katie wanted in her comment, but I only accomplished one. Now at this point, I will point out that I DID Hike for 4 miles on Saturday, so that brings it up to 2x if I count that. So, let’s call it exercising twice. However, on that front, I do have to mention a couple things. When you haven’t ridden your exercise bike in a couple weeks, you definitely feel it when you finally do! I was ready to quit at 3 minutes in! However, I pushed on, partly thanks to some good tunes playing in my headphones, and made it the full 15 minutes.

Diabetes/Health: Tuesday, I slipped out of work for an hour for an appointment with Jennifer. At my official weigh in, I had lost 5 pounds in the past month. GO ME! I have started to take the full dose of Byetta, and let me tell you, it has knocked my blood sugar flat! This drug is amazing! I am now going to see Jennifer every other month instead of every month, so I can’t wait to see my weight loss after 60 days instead of 30 (more on that in a few too).

Food/Water intake: Water intake is averaging two liters a day, which is right about where it should be. Food. Well, that is another story altogether. Being so busy, I fell in the eating-out trap again. Plus, one thing I had kind-of forgotten is that I am a stress eater, so on Wednesday during lunch, I went to the deli across the street and grabbed a pint of Dove Ice Cream (Pecan Caramel Perfection … YUM!). I know, I know. I shouldn’t have, but I did. Now, while the Byetta managed the blood sugar just fine through that assault … I really wish that Byetta blocked calories too… Oh, my Cap’n Crunch protest finished up phase one with me reaching the bottom of the box of Crunch Berries I bought. It was fun eating like a kid again, and I will say that it was interesting to see that even eating something as sugary as that is not all that devastating when done in moderation. I am now eating a healthier cereal for breakfast until phase two of the protest starts with me opening the box of Peanut Butter Crunch I bought at the same time as the Crunch Berries. On the plus side, Festival of nations is a huge event with lots of food. Normally I strap on the old feed-bag and have at, but this year, all I had was a couple of Oranginas, which is a sparking orange juice drink made with sparkling water and juice. It is not sweet like soda, and is actually very good. rather than eat all kinds of food at festival, I just had a couple of those and left it there. And now ... the moment of truth! Did all the stress and bad eating kill me when I stepped on the scale?

Weigh in: I hopped on the scale this morning and it read 273.4, for a gain of .2 pounds. I would have expected given my week a gain of at least a pound, maybe two (that Dove Ice Cream is REALLY rich), but instead I held pretty much steady. To me, this is a good thing. It means that my other activities balanced out the bad stuff enough to dull the impact. It means that without the stress and bad eating, I probably would have lost a couple pounds. Well, I can keep on working and lessening my stress level this week, which should hopefully help when it comes time to report in next week.
So, from the depths of a stress-induced 4am blogging session, I will sign off and try to sleep for an hour or so before my alarm goes off, telling me to haul my butt out of bed for work. Until next week, have a great day and a wonderful week!

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